Fired for a Joke? Professor's Quip Is No Laughing Matter at the Merchant Marine Academy

Gregory F. Sullivan could be fired over a joke he made in class about last month’s mass killings in a Colorado movie theater.

By Dan Berrett

The joke may have been stupid and callous. But was it a firing
offense?

That is a key question underlying a controversy at the U.S.
Merchant Marine Academy, where Gregory F. Sullivan could lose his
tenured position as an assistant professor of humanities because of
a joking reference to the mass shooting in a Colorado movie theater
last month, in which 12 people died and 58 were injured.

While punishing a faculty member for a single ill-advised joke
struck some observers as